He had his own phone in his hand. His first instinct was to call his brother—the one person he always turned to in times of trouble, no matter what issues they might be dealing with personally. His second thought was to call the police. He forced himself to hold off on both until he knew what to tell them.
“You haven’t been to the marina yet, have you?” he confirmed with Maggie.
She shook her head. “I came straight here. Uncle C.J. said he was headed that way. Everyone’s going to spread out and look for her.”
“She told me there’s a church service this morning. That she usually goes to sort of monitor things. Could she be at the pavilion already?” She could have just dropped the phone, he reminded himself. Probably hadn’t noticed. Maybe she’d had the same idea as Maggie about the marina coffee.
Maggie bit her lip. “I can’t imagine why. No one would be there this early.”
“Let’s go find out.”
Instinct made him look toward Terrence Landon’s cabin on his way to the golf cart. As usual, the blinds were tightly closed. He thought he saw a very faint glow of light from inside, but it was probably just a dimmed lamp serving as a night-light. He had no reason to believe Landon had anything to do with Shelby going missing. For one thing, he’d watched her head off in the other direction when she’d left him.
Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t be pounding on Landon’s door if Shelby didn’t turn up soon.
* * *
“What the hell have you done, Russ?”
Shuddering at the barely repressed fury in the gravelly male voice, Shelby shrank back against the wall in Cabin Seven. Her head pounded. Tied behind her, her arms ached. Her ankles were bound so tightly that she couldn’t feel her feet, but she had a feeling they were going to hurt like the devil if—when she was released, she amended quickly, trying to stay as positive as she could considering the circumstances.
It was dark in the cabin and her vision was still blurry from the hit on the head, but she could just see the two men standing on the far side of the room, glaring back at her. One was Terrence Landon—or Russ, as the other man had just called him. The angry newcomer was a man she’d seen once before, the pudgy middle-aged guy who’d visited earlier in the week.
“She’s been snooping around the whole time I’ve been here, Lowell,” Landon countered defensively. “I think she might have been in the cabin earlier today. She’d have seen the stuff.”
“You mean the stuff I told you not to leave lying around?”
Landon growled. “How was I supposed to know she’d come in?”
Shelby wanted to tell him that she hadn’t set foot inside the cabin, but because he’d stuck duct tape over her mouth, all she could do was mumble irritably.
“Shut up,” Landon snapped at her before turning back to the other man. “All I was waiting for was for you to get here with the cash. I’ll help you load your car with your stuff, then we can clear out of here, probably before anyone knows she’s missing. I’ll carry her out to my car under a blanket, hang on to her until I know we’ve gotten away clear, then I’ll let her go or something.”
Shelby didn’t like the sound of that “or something.”
She’d known from the start that the so-called Terrence Landon was strange, but she’d figured out in the past hours that the guy wasn’t particularly bright, either. He was such a bumbling TV stereotype of a bad guy that she might have laughed had she not woken up trussed up like a turkey and with him pacing and sweating, neither an encouraging indication of his stability. Lowell had shown up about ten minutes ago.
She couldn’t see a clock, but she thought it was probably somewhere between six-thirty and seven, judging from the light filtering in through the blinds and the sound of the awakening resort outside. It had been almost 2:00 a.m. when Landon had followed her and grabbed her on her way home. She didn’t know how he’d gotten her back to the cabin without anyone seeing him, but maybe it hadn’t been all that hard. As Aaron had pointed out when she’d left him, not many campers were awake at that hour. She hadn’t had a chance to scream and awaken anyone. By the time she’d come to, hurting and disoriented, she’d already been tied up. Landon had tried interrogating her about what she knew, but he hadn’t believed her repeated vows that she didn’t know anything. He’d taped her mouth when she’d tried to warn him that he was making a huge mistake holding her hostage.
People would be gathering at the pavilion soon. Aaron would be there, she reminded herself hopefully. Would he know to question Landon when she didn’t show up? How long would it take him to look for her, to figure out that she hadn’t just overslept? By that time Landon and Lowell could have left the resort, taking her with them.
“What you do with her is up to you,” Lowell growled. “I want nothing to do with it. You’ve got five minutes to help me get my stuff out of here. I’m not paying you a cent until it’s in my car and I know I’m going to drive away without any trouble.”
Landon nodded curtly. “Keep a watch out for the guy next door. I think he might be a cop. He’s been watching me, too. That’s why I called you and told you I had to get out of here today. I didn’t know it would take you almost four freaking hours to get here. If I’d know you were way the hell on the other side of Dallas when I called, I’d have already cleared out and met you somewhere else.”
“A cop?” Lowell’s already-ruddy face reddened even more. “That guy who was staring at me the other day is a cop?”
Grunting, Shelby shook her head fervently, though she wasn’t sure they even noticed.
“Look, I don’t know that for sure.” Landon sounded even more nervous now. “Could be she just has a nosy boyfriend. But I’m hanging on to her for insurance, just to make sure no one tries to stop us from leaving if they want her back safe.”
Lowell already had an armful of boxes and was headed for the door. “You don’t have enough sense to pour piss out of a boot, Russ. Don’t know why I was stupid enough to get hooked up with you, but I am not going down with you for kidnapping. This is all on you.”
Landon grabbed several more boxes and followed him, shooting a hard look at Shelby. “If you’d just minded your own business...”
She wished sincerely now that she had.
It took less than ten minutes for the men to carry out all the boxes. “That’s it?” Lowell looked around with narrowed eyes, clutching a fat briefcase in one hand. “That’s all of it?”